Where did the new corona virus originate, and how could it happen?

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by Admin

created 20:41, 6 August 2020 , last edited 20:44, 6 August 2020

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It is generally believed that Covid-19 originates from bats; further, it is assumed that the outbreak in Wuhan did not directly come from bats, but by means of an intermediate host, that served as a "virus reservoir" in which the virus became better adapted to infecting humans.

The Chinese government tried to put the blame on food sellers and categorically denied that one of the bio-research labs in Wuhan could have been involved in the outbreak. However, there is no evidence that the virus originated at a food market, and a short paper by Chinese scientists that provided circumstantial evidence pointing in the direction of the bio-research labs, was suppressed.

According to a recent preprint by Piplani et al, Covid-19 seems best adapted to human cells - more than to any animal that was considered as intermediary hosts such as pangolins. "the data indicates that SARSCoV2 is uniquely adapted to infect humans". That's puzzling!

And now an excellent discussion article has appeared, written by a virologist and a geneticist who came up with a detailed, well researched hypothesis about the possible origin of Covid-19. They discovered that long before the outbreak, at least one blood sample from pneumonia patients with an unknown illness had been sent to Wuhan. Those patients, of which some died, had been in the copper mine with the virus that is closest related to Covid-19.

Their hypothesis:
- accounts for the fact that infections first of all target the lungs
- the sudden appearance of a virus that is fully adapted to humans from the start
- its transmission from bats in Yunnan to humans in Wuhan, almost 1000 km away.

The article by Latham and Wilson, which is a follow-up of another fine article, is linked here.

It's worth mentioning that while the above-mentioned hypothesis is basically that of a natural origin with merely passive laboratory involvement, several other virologists such as Sørensen hold that the virus has characteristics that can not be of natural origin. His paper (rejected by several journals on editorial grounds without review) can be read here. A combination of those two hypotheses - a natural base with some artificial enhancement - can of course not be excluded. And even a natural cause without any lab involvement remains imaginable.

The World Health Organization is now investigating the possible origin, but there's reason to suspect that some of the most likely and obvious possible causes will be ignored. If so, little to nothing can be expected from it.

Comments are welcome! For anti-spam, anonymous comments (without site registration) cannot include web links.

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Admin

40 months ago

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For those who don't have the time to read that whole article by Latham et al, they also wrote a synopsis: https://bios...19-pandemic/

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Anonymous user #1

40 months ago

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Interesting to think of humans as the possible intermediate of the disease. If the initial virus was deadly enough to kill the Yunnan miners with severe pneumonia while not affecting the docs/nurses/or other people who were in contact with them, it means that the virus was already adapted to humans and not only maintained its fatal capabilities in spite numerous replications and overcoming mutations during 2012-2019 but also was armed with higher transmission abilities (covid-19 is said to be highly contagious). It is hard to think that ‘mutations’ could work that smart and make the virus only better and stronger (we often hear about new symptoms caused by covid-19). I am afraid that we will never be content with the theories we would hear about the mysterious covid-19 in the future as somewhere down deep we are expecting to hear that it wasn't nature’s fault and also we are not optimistic to hear the truth from the authorities and the organizations in charge.

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Admin

40 months ago

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According to their hypothesis which seems so far the best one that matches all known facts, it was at least originally "nature's fault" but human intervention played a role as well and may have made it worse. The bat virus was, and still is, not well adapted to humans. Further, deadly should not be confounded with contagious. Months of replications and reinfections in a host are necessary for significant adaptation. In the hospital doctors and nurses assumed that it could be a highly dangerous and contagious disease, and all standard precautions will have been met - different from Wuhan, they had just a handful of such dangerous patients to deal with. The worst accidents tend to happen due to a combination of several bad luck events in tandem.

"in spite numerous replications and overcoming mutations during 2012-2019": Instead, the samples were frozen! - compare with the 1977 Russian Flu Pandemic.

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Admin

40 months ago

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Another comment, received per email: "https://www....187305.shtml Here are some updates that the distribution the coronavirus. Apparently it didn't originate from china."

Thanks, I looked at that article with the title " More global research, evidence prove Chinese COVID-19 data accurate, virus not from China".

Contrary to the title's suggestion, I found in that article no evidence that the virus may have originated from another country than China.

They cite one pre-publication from the Pasteur Institute which infers that "the virus was silently circulating in France in February" and "viruses in China and France are from the same ancestor, but they are in two different clades". You can find that paper here: https://www.....24.059576v2

From that paper's summary I understand that this "implies local circulation of the virus in undocumented infections". The paper states in the introduction that "The first European cases sampled on January 24, 2020 [...] were direct imports from Hubei, China". No hypothesis or evidence is given that suggests that the virus originated in France! Instead, the article clarifies that "two different clades" corresponds to just a single mutation, and that "we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February, a scenario compatible with the large proportion of mild or asymptomatic diseases."

Based on that, my first impression of globaltimes.cn is that it is a propaganda outlet. Often such disinformation sources refer to high quality information that they hope most people will not read or understand.

Even Chinese virologists suppose that the virus probably descended from bats in China. The detailed hypothesis of Latham and Wilson supports that basic assumption but fills in the blanks with surprising facts that they uncovered.

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Admin

38 months ago

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One more comment, received per email:

https://www....-020-00451-1

My reaction:

Thanks! According to that short article:

'Writing in September 2020, the scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 did not gain the ability to infect humans as the result of recombination with another virus. [..] SARS-CoV-2 diverged within bat coronavirus lineages.'

That is consistent with Piplani's origin hypothesis, according to which the Wuhan coronavirus originated from the mine where the famous bats were found, almost 1000 km away.

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Admin

29 months ago

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In the meantime more details are known about the relationship between the mine and the Wuhan lab, giving more context:

"As independent researchers later found out by comparing genome sequences from archived Chinese databases, the virus that Shi referenced in 2020 was actually RaBtCoV/4991, the virus that was taken from the Mojiang Mine back in 2012 and written about in 2016."

"Shi obscured the true origins of RaBtCov/4911 and obfuscated her 2013 discovery"

https://www....3878140.html

This recent article only misses the important fact that even an infected human sample had been sent to the lab in Wuhan, as discussed here.

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Admin

17 months ago

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It's high time to close comments - but here's one last update with additional references: [Fauci’s COVID Origin SWAT Team Versus the Mojiang Miner Passage Theory]

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